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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (28423)	5/5/2002 5:05:08 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

If I read what's written about the Jordanians and the Saudis correctly, the lack of a direction, whether finally workable or not, is the largest problems their regimes face right now. And if one is worried about the degree to which or the speed at which Al Qaida like groups gain legitimacy in these countries, it's much to be worried about. Put another way, their efforts to support the terrorists but point them elsewhere (this particularly goes for the Saudis) have become unstable. Do you remember what Tom Friedman said in reply when Saudis assured him that Osama bin Laden was a "deviant"? He said, there are two kinds of deviant. One kind believes something different from what everybody else believes. The other kind believes the same thing as everybody else, but differs in that he's actually willing to act upon his beliefs. Implying, clearly, that OBL belongs to the second class of deviants. And what is OBL's dearest political wish? Overthrowing the corrupt House of Saud. One could almost say that the Saudis are appealing to the State Department, which loves stability more than anything else in the world, to save them from the natural results of their own double game.